XI

  When I entered, Iskra was at the anvil. With each blow of his hammer, sparks flew, scattering into the air in a sharp, merciless rhythm. He didn’t even look up from his work as I closed the door behind me. Still, I was sure he knew it was me. I was undoubtedly his only customer who would show up unannounced at midnight.

  I pulled down the hood of my cloak and began to approach the anvil. My heart was beating as if it wanted to pierce through my ribcage, and the hellish heat of the forge burned my throat.

  “I’m back.”

  “Asterin Eloyne,” he said in his raspy voice. He put down his hammer and wiped the beads of sweat from his green forehead with the back of his large hand. “The shop is closed.”

  “I thought we were past that,” I said with a smile. Iskra might have been acting indifferent, but the payment I had promised him on my last visit had already made his eyes sparkle. I figured it wouldn’t hurt to toy with him a little.

  “Then I’ll come back in the morning.” I pretended to turn and walk away down the crowded, goods-filled corridor.

  “Wait,” he said. His hurried, limping steps creaked against the floor. It took him quite a while to reach me, and I savored every second of it. “I think I’ll make an exception for you. Did you bring it?”

  I reached into my cloak pocket and pulled out the bottle. The red liquid glowed like rubies in the warm light emanating from the stove, swirling with golden reflections. It seemed alive, as if it still carried Calithra’s will.

  Iskra snatched the bottle from me. Lifting it between his thick fingers and holding it up to the light, his tongue darted out to moisten his dry lips. He was excited—already affected—and the hungry gleam in his eyes was impossible to hide.

  He hurried down the corridor, knocking over items on the shelves, and I followed. I held my breath as he placed the bottle on the counter to examine it more closely. I had given him a noble blood oath, and I had kept it—at least in part. The payment he examined with such enthusiasm carried the murmurings of Prince Tharen, even from afar.

  “This,” he murmured after what felt like an eternity, “is enough payment for a new whip. Definitely pure and powerful.”

  I exhaled a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding. This was good; Calithra hadn’t disappointed me.

  “Actually, I don’t want a new whip anymore. I came here for something else.”

  Iskra raised one of his bushy eyebrows. He clearly didn’t like this sudden change.

  “Then what do you want?”

  I pulled my leather-bound notebook from the inside pocket of my cloak and opened it to the page listing the auction’s thirty-three items. My heart fluttered as I tossed the notebook onto the counter in front of him. My plan was still just a rough draft, yet the impatience inside me swelled in my chest like the echo of a victory already won.

  “I want cheap copies of everything listed here.”

  Steal and replace with the counterfeit. It was a simple plan, but if executed correctly, it would work flawlessly. As long as those nobles remained so foolish, deceiving them was practically my duty.

  Iskra’s eyes widened with every line he read—as did the value of the goods listed. When he finally closed the notebook, his gaze was filled with suspicion.

  “What are you up to now?”

  I smiled.

  “I placed my order and made my payment,” I said. “I don’t think you need anything more.”

  “You’re lucky I was expelled from the royal blacksmiths,” he said sullenly. “Some of the goods listed here are quite valuable. Besides, I can’t make the Moonlight Flowers—the ones the princess bought.”

  I shrugged. I had never thought they were worth stealing in the first place. Princess Eirlys could have them; I wasn’t going to take that away from her.

  “I don’t even understand why they’re at auction,” I said.

  “Healers use them,” Iskra replied. “They’re valuable because they’re rare.”

  “Then forget about them,” I said, waving my hand. “You make copies of the remaining thirty-two items, and we’ll call it a deal.” I ran my index finger over the cork of the bottle, reminding him that he wouldn’t get paid until he said the magic word.

  Iskra thought for a moment. His forehead wrinkled, his brows furrowed, and his huge hand hovered in the air as if ready to take the bottle. Finally, he said,

  “It’s a deal.”

  I withdrew my hand from the bottle.

  “When will it be ready?”

  “A week, maybe two. I’ll make cheap copies.”

  “All right,” I said. “But I need copies of the ancient parchments as soon as possible. In fact, I need them now.”

  Prince Tharen had said he would send word to the Seer Ilaron, which meant I might have to go to the seer’s castle in Lyrae’s form at any moment. To get my hands on the ancient parchments, Iskra needed to move quickly and prepare placeholder copies.

  Iskra sighed heavily, making it clear that I was definitely not his favorite customer.

  “Is that so? Then fetch the ink and pens from the shelf and help me.”

  ***

  Iskra and I sat down at a wooden table amid the crackling of the stove and the chirping of crickets echoing through the side streets, and got to work. Sitting hunched over in Iskra’s small chairs was already starting to hurt my back.

  It wasn’t difficult to access the texts of the ancient sayings; the quotations were everywhere. But for some, it wasn’t about the content—it was about the parchment the ink first touched. To possess the real thing… that was a desire driven not by reason but by pride. Whatever this language was, it was quite complex, and drawing the symbols onto parchment was so laborious that I began to think Iskra was undercharging for the work.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  “Why did you give up the whip? Or did you decide dragons weren’t for you, and your new hobby is thievery?” Iskra asked in a mocking tone.

  A hysterical laugh escaped my lips. “I’ve been a thief for as long as I can remember, Iskra.”

  “You’d better not have stolen anything from this shop.” Iskra reached out to dip his quill into the ink. “Otherwise, I’ll ban you from entering here forever.”

  “The goods you’ve already made don’t interest me,” I said, trying to draw the symbols as accurately as I could. “As for the goods you’re going to make, it’s not really possible to deceive you.”

  “Of course not,” said Iskra, puffing out his chest. “I am one of the old royal blacksmiths. My craft is flawless, and I won’t sell it cheaply.”

  “Really,” I muttered. “Why were you expelled from the royal court?” My voice trailed off toward the end of the question; for some reason, I had always hesitated to ask Iskra this. Perhaps it was because I hated the ear-piercing tone his voice took on when he scolded me. Fortunately, Iskra didn’t disturb the strange calm we were in.

  “It’s a long story, but I don’t think you’ll get bored when there are dragons involved,” he said, placing his pen on the table.

  My surprise caused my hand to twitch, and ink splashed onto the parchment I was working on. “Dragons?”

  Iskra settled more comfortably in his chair, legs spread, belly exposed, his bulky body leaning back.

  “Zerin Ashvael. We were in the same guild when she invented that deadly enchantment.”

  Zerin Ashvael.

  “Are you telling me that the leader of the Ashvael Clan was once a royal blacksmith?” This was unexpected information. Its effect was immediate but limited; it opened a small void in my mind, forcing my thoughts to realign. What really surprised me was that I hadn’t known this before. “Then why did she disobey orders and refuse to share the enchantment she created with the king?”

  “Because the purpose for which the enchantment was created clashed with the King’s plan. Zerin created that enchantment to hunt dragons. The king, however, wanted it to train dragons and build an army. When Zerin’s enchantment was used in chains, it could restrain dragons; when used in saddles, it could make them obedient. But Zerin refused to use it for that purpose.”

  I clenched my teeth. Of course, the King had thought of this before. Any ruler who witnessed the power of dragons would want to wield it. Still, Calithra had said dragons were unusual weapons.

  “So why did the King give up? Couldn’t he control the dragons with the power he held?”

  “His power has its limits too, Asterin,” Iskra said wisely. “He controls the borders and the army, and most importantly, he controls all of Gloomwood. Every creature in Gloomwood, every trap, and every carefully designed illusion constantly occupies a part of the King’s power.”

  “So he wouldn’t give up Gloomwood even for dragons?” I muttered, my stomach clenching. My mind couldn’t comprehend how immense—how boundless—this hatred was. It was born once, and nothing could extinguish it; it wove the past, present, and future with hatred. I felt a slight nausea in the pit of my stomach, a cold sweat on my neck. It was as if the air had been poisoned, the world blurred.

  “Yes. But he tried his own methods too,” said Iskra. He seemed oblivious to the mood that had suddenly enveloped me. His coal-black eyes were fixed on a point on the floor. No doubt the things he had witnessed were playing incessantly in a corner of his mind.

  “Not being able to control the dragons frightened him. He was used to holding power in his hands, and dragons possessed every trait he despised: rebellious, headstrong, and proud.”

  “Let me guess—he thought that if even he couldn’t control them, no elf could,” I said. The nausea in my stomach had finally subsided.

  “That was out of the question,” said Iskra. “Of course, there were elves who tried; I forged their whips myself. There were riders too—and I’m sure there still are. A massive underground training ground was built for them to practice. The riders could steer the dragons, but they couldn’t control their fire. Dragons could only be a means of transportation, not a weapon.”

  “And the King gave up,” I said. Iskra was right; the riders in the Hollow were trying too, but they couldn’t control the dragons’ flames. It was impossible for us to start a revolution this way.

  “Is that why he exiled you too? Because the whips you forged didn’t work?”

  “The whips I forged were flawless,” said Iskra, sounding offended. “I helped Zerin escape. If I hadn’t, they would have tortured her to learn the spell. When what I did came to light, I was exiled.”

  I bit my lower lip. Everything Iskra said matched what I had witnessed. The Hollow had been built for this failed experiment and then abandoned to oblivion for at least a century—until Prince Vaelis breathed life into it again, with a few allies and a revolutionary fire in his heart.

  “What kind of ruler do you think Prince Vaelis would have been?” The question slipped out before I could stop it, rolling off my tongue with surprising ease.

  Iskra shrugged. “When the middle prince was born, I had been in exile for nearly a century. I remember that when news of Prince Vaelis’s birth spread throughout the capital, a terrible blizzard had taken us captive.”

  A roaring, massive blizzard… What a chaotic and noisy contrast to Vaelis’s presence—calm as moonlight and sharp as night frost.

  “Where did that come from?” asked Iskra. He leaned over the table again and roughly picked up his elegant quill. “Prince Tharen will ascend the throne. It is destiny.”

  Iskra could be right. Fate had already chosen Tharen as the throne’s heir. However, the throne could embrace Vaelis in the same way and weave the threads of fate anew.

  Control a dragon’s flame?

  My breath caught in my throat. That day, when we were reunited with Ilmestys in the Hollow, she had been ready to unleash her fire upon Vaelis. But when I placed my hand on her nose, the flame rising from her throat died, turning into a thin cloud of ash escaping between her teeth.

  If I could stop her, I could just as easily fan her flames.

  I jumped up so fast I nearly hit my head on the low ceiling.

  “Iskra,” I said in a shaky voice, “go on without me.”

  Iskra let out a snort. “Are you kidding me?”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, already moving toward the exit. My steps were quick and deadly purposeful. If I succeeded—if I could control Ilmestys’s attacks even a little—I could reshape everything, guarantee our victory. And I would never know unless I tried.

  ***

  When I reached the Hollow at breakneck speed, I found Vaelis standing at a cautious distance from Ilmestys, studying her. It was as if his mind stretched beyond what his eyes could see, silently asking questions, weighing possibilities. His whole demeanor reflected a calm but deep focus, a quiet curiosity; the world around him seemed almost to have vanished.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked, breathless from running.

  My disheveled and frantic appearance must have startled Vaelis. His lips parted slightly as he looked me up and down.

  “What happened to you?”

  “I’ll tell you,” I said, hurrying toward Ilmestys without letting my breath settle.

  She lowered her head, one hand running over the scales on the side of her neck while the other reached for the saddle strap. As I fastened it, I climbed onto her neck, pressing down on Ilmestys’s claw.

  I was so excited that I was trying to do everything at once. I took my place in Ilmestys’s saddle and adjusted it by gently tightening the straps. My back was straight, and the reins were firmly in my hands.

  Now I was looking down at Vaelis from the top of my dragon’s back.

  “Come on,” I said without thinking.

  The prince’s mouth opened and closed; I had startled him twice in a few minutes, and it would be a lie to say I didn’t enjoy it.

  “What?”

  “Come on,” I repeated, loosening the reins and allowing Ilmestys to lower her neck even further. “We’re going for a little test ride.”

  Vaelis’s hesitation lasted less than a second. The stunned look on his face gave way to a smile, and he began to climb easily onto the saddle.

  “Where are we going?”

  Vaelis took his place behind me, his fresh scent—reminiscent of clean night air—enveloping me.

  “I don’t know,” I said honestly. “To freedom?”

  I was right. The moment Ilmestys took flight, a tingling sensation filled me.

  Undoubtedly, this was freedom.